


Freeing a Starling

by rinielena



Category: The Morning Gift - Eva Ibbotson
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Secret Marriage, kind of? do they count as friends?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinielena/pseuds/rinielena
Summary: "Now," Quin said, "I'm going to kiss you."
Relationships: Ruth Berger/Quinton Somerville
Kudos: 1





	Freeing a Starling

**Author's Note:**

> Filling in a bit of the gap between Quin's declaration to Ruth and the morning after.

"Now," Quin said, "I'm going to kiss you."

He moved slowly closer to her on the sofa. Ruth sat perfectly still. Quin's eyes, when she looked up to them, were somehow both soft and demanding. He was always so full of contrasts, Ruth thought. An Englishman with a gentle voice. Kicking her out of the house one moment, and carrying her up to his room the next. Divorcing her one moment, and the next...

He was next to her. She could feel the warmth of his body as if she were sitting next to a fire much stronger than the two candles on the table beside them. The light flickered across his face as it approached hers. His hands cradled her head. Ruth couldn't help noticing how different his touch felt from Heini's - so much more careful, and yet so much more confident at the same time. Another contrast, she started to think, and then his lips were on hers.

To describe Quin's kissing merely as "different from Heini's" would be doing the experience an unthinkably great disservice. Ruth could not remember ever feeling so - loose. So warm and relaxed and excited all at once. Quin's lips stroked against her own, and it felt simply marvelous. His fingers -- those frustrating, troublesome, delightful fingers -- tangled in the hair at the back of her head. His other hand moved down her neck and over her shoulders to stroke her back gently. Without thinking - for how could she think anymore, with Quin touching and kissing her so? - Ruth shifted closer to him, wrapping her arms around him in return. Quin's arm tightened around her back, holding her against him. His lips slid from her mouth to her cheek, her jaw, her neck, the hollow of her ear. Ruth gasped for air. Her head seemed to tilt of its own accord in sync with his, allowing his mouth free rein.

"My sweet darling," he whispered in her ear, kissing the lobe. "Sweet, sweet Ruth." He returned to her neck, doing something unimaginable with his tongue that caused Ruth to let out an involuntary moan. She felt his lips smile against her, felt his breath on her throat as he chuckled slightly. He pulled back to look at her, keeping his arms wrapped around her waist. "My dear, how could you possibly think of yourself as frigid? You are the warmest person I have ever had the honor of meeting. You are perfect. You are a joy."

Ruth looked up at him. "Why did you stop kissing me?" 

Quin's smile widened until he could only be described as beaming. 

"Would you like me to kiss you some more?" he asked. Ruth nodded.

"Yes, please," she declared. Her voice was that of the girl who so had so easily wrapped his entire staff - both at Thameside and at Beaumont - around her finger. Very few had the power to resist such a voice, even if they were inclined to do so, and Quin, in this moment, was certainly not. He bent over her body - now fully seated in his lap - and lifted his hand to support her head as it tilted back to meet his lips once more.

This time, he went further, running his tongue over her bottom lip, coaxing her mouth open and meeting her tongue with his own. His hands ran over her sides from shoulder to hip and back again.

"Tell me what you'd like, my darling," he said, breathless. "Tell me how much you want."

"Everything," Ruth said.

"Everything? Are you sure?"

"Positive."

Quin looked at Ruth more seriously. "What about Heini? And the Jewish divorce rituals?"

"Heini is not my husband," Ruth said. "And I am tired, so tired, of staying away from you. I do not want to be invisible. I do not want to pretend not to think about Beaumont every day and try not to wish that it could be my home, and I do not want to avoid watching Verena Plackett lay claim to the house, and to paleontology, and to you, until I am so angry that I must throw a rock through your window."

She suddenly stopped, looking stricken. "But what about you?" she asked, aghast. "What about Morgan, and the three C's?"

"My dear," Quin said. "You cannot honestly think that I would prefer to uphold the three C's, when I could instead have you? All the Verena Placketts in the world could never come close to comparing to you. I want you everywhere. I want you at Beaumont, and in my flat, and on my expeditions. I want you so much I could not bear to have you near me, not when I knew you were saving yourself for Heini. I couldn't watch you working yourself to the bone, starving yourself to save up for his piano. It's been killing me to see you now, exhausted all the time while he refuses to get a job or chip in or - " Quin cut himself off. No matter what he thought of Heini, he knew that there were some things that should not be said by a third party until the person wronged had herself admitted them.

In his lap, Ruth's head was bowed. "You must think me very stupid," she said quietly. "To have stayed with him all this time."

Quin hugged her close. "Of course not," he said. "You are far from stupid. You are clever, and lovely, and bright. You deserve everything good in the world, cruel though the world has been to you. You do not deserve the inside of a cage."

They were quiet for a while, holding onto each other.

"Heini," Ruth said, hesitantly and with more than a bit of Aberdeen in her voice, "I think, is not a very nice boy."

Quin had nothing to say to that, so he just continued to hold her, kissing the top of her head.

"Quinton?" she said.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Would you kiss me again now?"

He pressed his lips to her temple again. "Of course, my love." He started to move towards her mouth, but she wasn't finished talking.

"Would you more than kiss me? I mean to say, would you make love to me? Would you -- help me learn?"

Quin looked her in the eye, and Ruth was quite nearly overcome by the amount of tenderness, and desire, and sheer love that she saw in his face.

"Nothing could make me happier."


End file.
